In his August 18, 1956 speech accepting the presidential nomination, Stevenson used this double simile to verbally shake his head at the idea that politics is just like product merchanding.

Ministers fall like buttered bread; usually on the good side —Ludwig Boerne

One revolution is just like one cocktail; it just gets you organized for the next —Will Rogers

Patronage personnel are like a broken gun, you can’t make them work, and you can’t fire them —Peter Dominick, from the monthly newsletter of Senator Dominick, August, 1966

Political elections … are a good deal like marriages, there’s no accounting for anyone’s taste —Will Rogers, weekly newspaper article, May 10, 1925

Political rhetoric has become, like advertising, audible wallpaper, always there but rarely noticed —George F. Will

A politician is like quick-silver; if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it —Austin O’Malley

Politicians are like drunks. We’re the ones who have to clean up after them —Bryan Forbes

Politicians are like the bones of a horse’s foreshoulder, not a straight one in it —Wendell Phillips, 1864 speech

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous —Sir Winston Churchill

Churchill followed up the simile with, “In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.”

Politics are like a labyrinth, from the inner intricacies of which it is even more difficult to find the way of escape than it was to find the way into them —William E. Gladstone

Politics is like a circus wrestling match —Nikita S. Khrushchev

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage —Edouard Herriot

Politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important —Eugene McCarthy

Politics is like waking up in the morning. You never know whose head you will find on the pillow —Winston Churchill

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error —Thomas Jefferson

Presidential appointments are left to us like bad debts after death —Janet Flanner

Professional politicians are like chain smokers, lighting a new campaign on the butt of the old one —Steven V. Roberts, New York Times, November 24, 1986

This was the only simile in Roberts’ article. Yet, as is so often the case, it was the phrase highlighted as a boxed blurb to get reader attention.

The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke —John Dewey

The pursuit of politics is like chasing women: the expense is damnable, the position ridiculous, the pleasure fleeting —Robert Traver

Running for public office was not unlike suffering a heart attack; overnight one’s whole way of life had abruptly to be changed —Robert Traver

So long as we read about revolutions in books, they all look very nice … like those landscapes which, as artistic engravings on white vellum, look so pure and friendly —Heinrich Heine

(They said) the range of political thinking is round, like the face of a clock —Tony Ardizzone

A voter without a ballot is like a soldier without a bullet —Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York Times Book Review, October 27, 1957

Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand, the one doing the important job, unnoticed —David K. Shipler, New York Times, March 15, 1987

Quotations

“Politics is the art of the possible” [Prince Otto von Bismarck]
“A week is a long time in politics” [Harold Wilson]
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable” [John Kenneth Galbraith Ambassador’s Journal]
“Politics…has always been the systematic organisation of hatreds” [Henry Brooks Adams The Education of Henry Adams]
“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts” [Henry Brooks Adams The Education of Henry Adams]
“In politics the middle way is none at all” [John Adams]
“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly” [Samuel Taylor Coleridge Table Talk]
“There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves” [Junius Public Advertiser]
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed” [Mao Tse-tung]
“Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary” [Robert Louis Stevenson Familiar Studies of Men and Books]
“Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things” [Dr. Johnson]
“politics: a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage” [Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary]
Proverbs
“Politics makes strange bedfellows”